He came close to swallowing his own tongue. “How do you know those names?”
“They’re friends of mine. Where are they? What are all you goons doing here, letting everything go to hell?”
“Friends of yours, you say? That’s about the stupidest thing anybody ever said to me. As far as—”
The door slammed open and Neila burst through, Selkirk and Harmon on her heels. Bannion forgot what he’s started to say, because Neila was waving a book over her head, an aged book, falling apart at the spine.
“I found it, Bannion,” she said. “Before you say another word, you’ve got to see this.”
The woman, Lily, stared out at the shed across the way until Harm shut off the view. Then she swallowed, coughed, and sank slowly into the chair nearest her. It was where Bannion had been sitting earlier, but she drank from his half-full cup of tea as if grasping at a lifeline.
A picture, no, Bannion corrected himself,a photograph, floated out of the book from between pages, settling on the floor equidistant from each of them. It was quite a large photograph and, considering the relic’s age, the image clear. Distinct enough, in fact, to recognize the setting, and even the people, if one were to see them in real life.
Harm, being young and quick, darted in and picked up the photo. “Here, Mom.” He gave it a fleeting look. “What’s so great about this old thing? Flett can draw better pictures.”
Harm’s confidence in Flett’s abilities, Bannion thought, though commendable, was a little misplaced. His understanding was that photographs captured the image in an instant. This old picture contained details it would take Flett a week or more to replicate.
Neila handed Bannion the photo. “What do you make of this?”
He studied it a moment before squatting beside the woman in the chair and, holding it by his finger pads, tipping the artifact for her to see. She flicked it a glance then, jumping to her feet, snatched the photograph out of his hands.
“Where did you get this? Nate—” Her forehead puckered as she gavetheirNate a hard stare—which Bannion noticed he returned blandly—and she continued more slowly. “NateBell took this with the new digital camera Ginger got for her thirteenth birthday. Look. There was still a glimmer of sunshine before the storm came in. Makes Heathen’s hindquarters shine as though coated with wax.” She met Bannion’s eyes. “Where are these people now, Mr. O’Quinn? What have you done with them? And where is my horse?” Her fingernail clicked against the photograph. “This horse.”
“What do you mean, that horse?” Harmon glared at the Turnbow woman. “Mom, is she crazy?”
Neila’s eyes flashed. Amusement? Bannion wondered. Or wonder touched with fear? Most probably, some of each.
“Impolite,” Selkirk admonished.
“But, Uncle, Mom just got that picture out of the—”
“Harmon, quiet. You haven’t earned a place in this discussion. Speak only to answer questions.” Nate’s quiet reprimand stopped the boy.
“Aw,” the boy muttered. Fortunately, the habit of obeying his elders was strong enough to mute him.
“See now,” Bannion said to Lily, “this is the kind of thing that gives me fits.”
“You should let the boy talk. Maybe we’ll get somewhere with him running the show.” She nodded to the boy. “What makes you think I’m crazy, kid?”
Harmon, respect for Nate’s reproof sinking in at just the wrong time, answered before Bannion or Neila could stop him. “Because these people have been dead since the Event.”
Lily shook her head.
“Big Bang,” Harmony clarified. “Most of them have, anyway. Except Ginger and Nate. ‘Course they are now. Dead, I mean.” His chin lifted proudly. “They’re my great-grandparents.”
Neila inhaled deeply. “Great, great,” she corrected him.
“Yeah. Great-great grandparents.” He didn’t seem to see Lily turning dead white, or notice the way she quit breathing.
“And that horse, Heathen,” Harmon continued. “She’s part of the found—uh—foundation line of the Bell/O’Quinn stud. Years and years andyears ago.”
“Are you done bragging?” Selkirk asked, tousling the boy’s hair.
Harmon batted at his uncle’s hand.
Bannion barely noticed the interplay between his male relatives, because of his own grim realization being reflected in Neila’s face. The photograph was indisputably of the same Lily Turnbow standing right there with them now. She even wore the same clothes as in the picture, her brown hair in the same thick braid.
But no. He was mistaken in one thing. She was no longer standing, because her eyes had rolled back in her head and before anyone could catch her, she thumped onto the floor at their feet.
“Well,” Selkirk said in obvious surprise. “Well.”
Chapter 13
Lily’s head pounded like the big bass drum in a marching band when she came around a few moments later. Nate Quick, to her surprise, had her in his arms carrying her down the hall like a baby. The floating sensation added to her stomach’s distress.
“Which room?” Nate asked Neila who followed them, and at the jerk of her thumb, headed toward the little room Lily’d escaped from only an hour ago.
Nate’s golden eyes met hers. “Okay?” he asked, so softly she wasn’t sure but that he only mouthed the words.
At first she couldn’t answer.Okay? Hell, no. Shocked, embarrassed, afraid. Sick! Not okay.The whole of her predicament flooded in. What a revolting development. At this rate they were apt to lock her up for the rest of her life as a dangerous lunatic, though a physically weak one.
“Hold on,” she said, surprised when her voice came out scratchy and faint as an old 33 1/3 record, ancient history even to her. The irony of the simile didn’t escape her. According to these people, Nate Bell and Ginger Poundstone, teenagers less than a week ago, had somehow become the great-grandparents of the boy traipsing along behind them, his eyes big with wonder at this intriguing morsel of information.
Which meant that she—
The concept was too much for her pea-brain to cope with, let alone a boy’s. Yeah. The kid had figured out the impossibility of it all just as well as the rest of them. Didn’t quite mean as much to him as it did to her, of course. The thought of being something like a hundred and thirty years old set one back a step, for sure. Because, of course, such a scenario could not be a viable possibility.Could it?
“Put me down.” Her demand came out louder this time. Nate didn’t stop though. “Hey, guy,” she said. “Wait a minute. I’m all right now.” They were already at the door to the room.
“It won’t hurt you to lie down a few minutes,” Neila said, coming forward and working the door. “I’ll bring more tea with honey in it, and a cold compress for the back of your head. You hit pretty hard when you fell.”
Yeah. As if she didn’t know.
The rest of the gang trooped in behind them. Already tiny, the room became seriously overcrowded with the addition of three men, the healer, and the boy.
Nate put her on the cot and stepped back. Despite her best intentions, Lily liked the soft pillow beneath her aching head, and even the saggy mattress poufing around her body. She wanted to sink into what comfort the rather Spartan quarters afforded and forget the conclusions scampering around in her brain like a bunch of crazy rats.
Not a good idea to let herself relax, she knew. Not for a moment. Wincing with pain, she sat up.
“You want to tell me how you got hold of that picture?” she asked Neila.
“You want to tell me how you seem to be part of it?” Neila countered.
Bannion’s head jerked agreement, as the other man, Selkirk, looked bewildered. Nate, once again, had stepped back and taken a position leaning against the wall. The boy, dark-eyed and sharp-faced like his mother, stood behind his big relatives, watching and listening. Banded together, the five of them filled the room to overflowing and surrounded her in a ring of suspicion.
“I don’t know,” she said,
her voice flat. “But I think you people have a good idea. It might be helpful if you let me in on the secret.”
Neila’s mouth tightened. After a full minute of silence, the healer grimaced and motioned for Bannion and Selkirk to accompany her out of the room, leaving Nate and Harmon to baby sit.
Making sure she didn’t escape, Lily thought. Unnecessary. The door seemed well-guarded and the single window only big enough for a skinny cat. Looked as if it was painted shut, anyway. Through the window she saw the two men and Neila pacing up and down the patch of dry grass between the infirmary and a gravel road leading to one of the barns. She saw their mouths moving, their expressions intense as they seemed to be arguing about something, but even with her superlative hearing their words were beyond her.
“Why is Mom mad at Bannion?” Harmon asked, looking to his older cousin or uncle or whatever relationship lay between them.
Nate shook his head. “She’s not mad at him,” he said with a lift of one shoulder. “She’s just upset. Worried. Freaked out by this whole business. The usual.”
“Yeah, the usual.” The boy scowled.
There, Lily thought, was another of those anomalies. Sometimes these people used the idiom as if born to it; other times their speech took an unfamiliar turn. Such as when Nate smiled at her and said, “Looks like you’ve been walking the void a long time, Lily Turnbow.” And, as if that wasn’t an obscure enough statement, he added, “Have you always been her—Lily—I wonder, or is this a new incarnation?”
She stared at him, her brows drawing together. “What?”
“I’m told Cross-up people used to just pop up out of nowhere, like you’d been hiding under a rock. Other times, the elders say you’d take some poor sucker over and try to do the rest of us in. Which category do you fall into, Lily Turnbow?”
He didn’t sound so genial now, and the personable smile was missing.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “But it doesn’t sound promising.”
“That’s because it ain’t,” Harmon said. “My cousin Bannion don’t like Cross-up people. And neither does Uncle Selkirk, or Ma. Me neither. None of the O’Quinns or the Bells do.”
Because Nate’s strange eyes kept drawing her attention to him, Lily noticed the way his mouth pursed, then relaxed.
He ruffled the boy’s hair. Lily judged it a sign of appreciation for his loyalty, kind of like a man patting his dog in “atta boy” approval. Saved him the bother of having to explain.
“But I’m not a…” she began, then stopped. Maybe she was one of those Cross-up people they kept yammering about. Because what other explanation was there? “Pop up out of nowhere, like you’ve been hiding under a rock.” And those damned fireballs, tossing them around like they were nothing, right where everyone could see her. When she thought about it, Cross-up fit her situation to a tee. Only she had a hunch the description should becrossed-up person.
She pressed her head back against the pillow, almost wishing for the darkness to reclaim her. How was this predicament even possible? Rip Van Winkle like—or maybe Sleeping Beauty; she was female, after all—she’d gone to sleep, or, technically, been knocked out by a cataclysmic event in one time, and awakened in an entirely different era.
That noise. The flash. The unbearable pain. A sensation of being scattered into pieces. Maybe she had, and now, somehow, been put back together.
Not Sleeping Beauty, then. Humpty Dumpty.
When a little later Bannion and Neila entered the room Lily referred to in her mind as “her cell,” she kept her eyes closed and her back turned. She pretended to be asleep, even as her mind raced. Why the hell had she ever awakened? That was the question she kept asking herself.
“Lily Turnbow—” Bannion coughed loud enough to wake the comatose and when she couldn’t stop her eyelids from flickering a response, started in on her again. “Tell us about the horse, Heathen.”
A trick, Lily thought. Why should they want her to speak of the mustang? What difference did it make now? She kept her breathing deep and regular. Had she heard him? Sorry, no.
“Oh, let her sleep,” Neila said impatiently. “I’ve got things to do and she isn’t going anywhere. Have someone keep an eye on her. Harmon can sit outside and take first watch.”
Not that she needed it, but here was proof of incarceration. Lily almost took comfort from the affirmation. At least she knew where she stood with the O’Quinn clan.
As the door closed behind the healer and the two warriors, she determined to let sleep become the reality. What else was there to do? Besides, her mind was so very tired.
***
Before long, as was Lily’s intention, the boy Harmon grew bored with his assigned task. At first he’d sneaked into her room when no one was looking and tried to talk to her. She had no doubt she could’ve gotten a great deal of information from him, but it just didn’t seem worth the effort. When she remained silent, he went to drink tea and eat cookies in the kitchen. Not much excitement in watching a woman sleep, she smirked to herself.
Thereafter, she slept through the day watch. Someone brought food and left it on the bedside table. She ate. At night, her guard dozed. That’s when Lily, silent as a shadow, took the opportunity to slip from her room and look around. Although a padlock, in theory, kept her corralled, she found it surprisingly easy to jiggle free.
Moving on light cat’s feet, she found Bren, the night nurse, stretched out on a sagging couch. The woman never heard her creeping about. Lily questioned the woman’s effectiveness as a caretaker. Once she blundered into a table holding jars and bottles filled with medicinal preparations. The glassware clinked and rattled, but Bren snoozed on.
Snickering to herself, Lily peered through a window at the compound lighted by stars. Bright stars, shining in a way she’d never seen before.
Overcome with the desire to breathe fresh air, she unlocked the outside door as easily as she had her room. She jiggled, the lock released. But before she could open the door, she heard footsteps approaching and drew back. As she held to the doorknob beneath her hand, it jerked, stopped, was still. She fancied she heard breathing before the footsteps retreated.
Oh, yes. A prisoner indeed.
What’s the use? she asked herself. The O’Quinn leaders appeared determined to keep her apart from the rest of the clan, their distrust of her plain. The feeling was mutual, the only question she had concerned what they intended to do with her—and what she intended to do about them.
Two nights later, she had an unexpected visitor.
***
Bright moonlight streamed across the quilt on Lily’s bed as she awoke and tossed back the covers. New energy flowed through her, urging her body into motion. Same as the past couple nights, she jumped from the cot and began exercising her cramped and underused muscles. Arms reaching high overhead, twisting sideways, hamstrings stretching until she groaned. The floor, as usual, was cold beneath her bare feet and she shivered, fumbling to pull the bedside rug into a more accommodating position.
A soft catch, then exhalation of breath was the first clue she wasn’t alone.
Whirling toward the sound, Lily gasped. “Who…?” Then, “What are you doing here?”
Nate Quick arose from where he’d been seated in the room’s darkest corner and mimicked her arm reaches. “Right now? Admiring the scenery.”
“What?” She eyed him warily.
His hand lifted. “Make that waiting for you to wake up. I want to talk to you, Lily Turnbow. I hoped we could have a civilized exchange of information.”
“Really. A civilized exchange? I hadn’t noticed much in the way of civilization going around.”
“We live a hard life,” he said, an agreement of sorts. “Most every day is a challenge just to stay alive. Remain alert and watch each other’s back. That’s how we do it. We suspect everyone we meet is an enemy until he, or she, proves different. Hard for you to understand, I guess.”
“Might not be quite so hard if som
eone would just explain things to me.”
He came forward, into the same moonlight that bathed her. Snagging the quilt from the bed, he wrapped it around her, his hands gentle. “That occurred to me,” he said. “It’s why I’m here. Ask away. I’ll try to answer. Now that you’re covered up and less distracting.”
Heat climbed in her cheeks. Even though he hadn’t said that last sentence out loud, it had certainly been broadcast from his mind. But no, she added a second later. If that were the case it would mean she was a mind-reader as well as a…whatever else she was.
Horrified, it occurred to her that what she wasn’t was any kind of modest, having gone to bed wearing only her light t-shirt. And that barely covered her butt even when she wasn’t stretching for the ceiling. She hugged the quilt more tightly.
Mr. Nate Quick hadn’t seemed offended by her attire, or lack thereof. He seemed more…distracted.
And she, Lily thought, was just the girl to take advantage of it.
She plopped down onto the cot and patted the space beside her. Smiling with a wry twist of his mouth, he sat, perching on the very edge and crossing one leg over the other.
“Your relatives—brothers, cousins, whatever they are—keep calling me a Cross-up. I want to know why. I want to know what happened. Not,” she added, shaking a forefinger under his nose, “that I’m agreeing with any of the labels you people are putting on me.”
“Cousins,” he said. “We’re cousins. I’m not sure you know this, but Selkirk is clan leader. He runs the outfit, day-to-day. Neila is his sister. She’s the clan healer and all around wise woman.”
“Wise woman. Jacob called her that and was offended when I asked if that meant herbal healer or witch woman.”
“Better not mention anything about a witch woman. I think you might call her an advisor.”
“Hmm. But hardly a diplomat. What about Bannion?”
Nate cocked an eyebrow. “Bannion keeps everyone else in order. He and his patrollers fight our battles.”
Her fingers plucked at a thread on the quilt. “And you, Mr. Quick? What do you do?”
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